Governors volley past Generals in Dogwood semis

Volleyball is a fast-paced game, and there is little time to play it safe. A perfect example was found in Dogwood District semifinal match between visiting Nelson County and William Campbell in Naruna on Wednesday.

The Generals won the first two games only to have the Governors (15-3) dominate the next three games and take the match 21-25, 22-25, 25-14, 25-18 and 15-11 and advance to the Dogwood District championship match today at 7 p.m. in Altavista, where they will face the Colonels.

The victory also earns Nelson County a spot in the Region B tournament since the Dogwood’s regular season champ, Altavista, also advanced to the district tournament championship match.

“I knew if we would just start hitting the ball we could change momentum to our side,” Governors coach Vicki Crawford said. “We just weren’t hitting the ball like us.”

“I told them we have a lot of talent and it would be a doggone shame if we didn’t make it to the (region tournament).”

William Campbell finishes its season 14-8.

“We are still building a program,” Generals coach Brad Harper said. “We aren’t that far removed from some struggles. We’ve come a long way. Fourteen and eight isn’t exactly how we wanted to finish, but we’ve come a long way.”

The first two games couldn’t have been closer as the teams repeatedly traded the lead and neither team was able to build up more than a four-point lead.

But in the third game Nelson County used a pair of four-point runs to jump out to an early 10-3 lead and never looked back.

“I knew it couldn’t end here,” Nelson middle blocker Tashia Crawford said. “We were playing it really safe at the beginning. We needed to bring it and hit like we do in practice. We had to play to win. We had to hit, hit, hit. We had to play our game.”

“I told the girls to keep their heads up,” Harper said. “Karma can kind of be hard to overcome. We did the same thing to them earlier. They had one coming and tonight. It was their night.”

The Generals aren’t the only ones to have pulled off that comeback against the Governors this year. Altavista pulled it off a little over a week ago in Altavista to secure the Dogwood regular season title and stoke the fires for today’s match.

“(The Colonels) are our rivals,” Tashia Crawford said. “We knew we had them in beginning but we let them get the best of us those last three games by not playing our game.”

Ashley Wells paced Nelson on offense with 23 assists and two aces. Erika Toliver added 10 kills and Keona Loving had 53 assists.

Megan Holbrooks led William Campbell with eight kills, Jordan Haga had 30 assists and Lauren Marstin added 27 digs and four aces.